Trials

Somewhere deep down in his brain - like at a sub-lizard level where not even the most adventurous of theoretical psychology nerds dare to go - Trump knows he can't win. He can't win at anything anywhere anytime again anyone.

He never has.

So that sub-lizard kernel of primordial brain-like substance sends a message up the chain, telling him he has to scheme and connive his way through life, doing whatever is necessary to avoid having to go head-to-head with any opponent - because he knows he's not going to win if he stands by the rules and behaves honorably.

He "beat" Hillary in 2016, by salting the earth (amping up the efforts of House Republicans), enlisting and taking full advantage of Russian dis-information techniques on social media, accepting (IMO) illegal contributions of foreign money laundered through the NRA, and by counting on enough people to be so sure Hillary would win that they threw their votes away in one way or another.

We got a little bit hip to the tricks, which meant he lost bigger than expected in 2018, got his ass kicked in 2020, lost pretty big again in 2022 as Republicans barely eked out a House Majority and lost a seat in the Senate.

He lost 62 of 63 court challenges filed regarding the 2020 election.

He lost to E Jean Carroll - twice - and he's about to lose another one to her.

His best good buddy CPA took the fall for him, and spent time in jail for business fraud.

and

and

and

For more than 70 years, he's done whatever he's wanted to do, and never once really faced the music - while learning the art of Life In Smarmspace®.

Opinion

Trump’s far-fetched defenses aren’t actually aimed at the courtroom

You do not need a law degree to understand that conspiring with someone to commit a crime isn’t protected by the First Amendment, despite thrice-indicted former president Donald Trump and his lawyer claiming the opposite. This is only one of their many half-baked defenses and extraneous excuses.

Trump’s defenses are far-fetched. So why make them?

Let’s start with the First Amendment. As former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted,

“Many crimes involve speaking to others. Fraud is one of them. It is well-settled in the law that freedom of speech does not give you the right to commit fraud or engage in criminal conspiracies.”

Two Sunday talk show hosts made the same point when interviewing Trump lawyer John Lauro. NBC’s Chuck Todd (“You’re not allowed to use speech, though, in order to get somebody to commit a crime”) and CNN’s Dana Bash (“But you can’t break the law … like approving fake electors”) didn’t need law degrees to puncture that Lauro canard.

Moving on to Lauro’s and Trump’s professed desire to move the trial in the election case from D.C. to West Virginia (because it’s more “diverse”?!), the relevant case in the circuit that has been followed in other cases related to Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. v. Haldeman, holds that only if an impartial jury cannot be found during voir dire is the defendant “entitled to any actions necessary to assure that he receives a fair trial,” which might include a change of venue. However, in cases of such national notoriety, there is no place unaffected by pretrial publicity (which Trump constantly drives). Trump does not have a right to find a more MAGA-friendly state for his trial.

Moreover, the alleged crimes occurred in D.C. — and D.C. residents have every right to have the case decided in their backyard with their fellow residents as jurors.

We’ve also heard Trump’s usual claptrap that the judge is biased. He has smeared and insulted every judge (and prosecutor) — except U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon (who has been roundly criticized by others and whose ruling on outside review of classified documents was harshly reversed by the 11th Circuit). Disqualification, as was discussed in connection with Cannon’s assignment to the Mar-a-Lago case, is governed by a statute. Under Section 455 of Title 28 of the U.S. Code, a party must show the judge’s “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” for example with a showing of “personal bias or prejudice.” There is zero evidence of any such bias on the part of U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan; no reasonable person could question her impartiality. Whether Lauro thinks he can make a good-faith claim for recusal, without violating his ethical obligation to forgo frivolous arguments, remains an open question.

Other excuses do not seem to meet the straight-face test. It’s no defense to say that Trump did not “order” then-Vice President Mike Pence to overthrow the election. It will be enough to prove Trump attempted to engage him in an illegal plot to overthrow the election.

Lauro’s claim that Trump’s alleged arm-twisting of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,870 votes was merely “aspirational” is a real head-scratcher. Most conspiracies are aspirational (e.g., “I’d like to rob a bank”). But, of course, Trump allegedly implicitly threatened Raffensperger if he didn’t “find” the votes: (“It is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”) Arguing that a “technical” constitutional violation is not necessarily a criminal violation, as Lauro did, is equally perplexing. Surely, he knows some actions — such as depriving others of the right to have their vote counted — can be both criminal and constitutional violations.

Somewhat more serious, we have heard many Trump apologists raise the defense that he was simply following advice of counsel. That dog won’t hunt, either.

As a factual matter, attorneys — his White House counsel, Justice Department officials, including then-Attorney General William P. Barr, and even those conspiring with Trump — told him the plan wouldn’t fly. Paragraph 11 of the indictment documents numerous instances in which attorneys told him no fraud was detected. Even “Co-Conspirator 2” (John Eastman) wouldn’t say the plan was legal, only that it had never been tested (Paragraph 93). Moreover, the indictment says, “After that conversation, the Senior Advisor notified the Defendant that Co-Conspirator 2 had conceded that his plan was ‘not going to work.’” Yes, even the author of the phony elector plan conceded it would lose overwhelmingly at the Supreme Court.

As a legal matter, an advice of counsel claim defense fails if the lawyers are part of the illegal scheme and/or if the advice is unreasonable. The so-far unindicted co-conspirators Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro cannot shield Trump from the crime they allegedly were committing together. Given that Trump’s entire campaign staff, Justice Department and vice president knew the plan was bonkers, it’s fair to say reliance on the Eastman scheme could not have been reasonable. (Legal scholars and case law have clarified that you cannot shop around for legal advice to justify illegal conduct. If you do, you’re obviously looking to find a stooge, not independent legal advice.)

Likewise, the argument that Trump really thought he won is both wrong and irrelevant. Both the indictment and the Jan. 6 House select committee testimony underscored that at times Trump dropped the facade and acknowledged Joe Biden had won the presidency. Moreover, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth already rejected the “but he really believed it” defense in the case of another Jan. 6 defendant. He found that even if the Jan. 6 defendant “genuinely believed the election was stolen and that public officials had committed treason, that does not change the fact that he acted corruptly with consciousness of wrongdoing.” Lamberth added: “Belief that your actions are serving a greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing.”

So, what is going on here? Norman L. Eisen, a co-author of a Just Security model prosecution memo, practiced at the same criminal defense firm, Zuckerman Spaeder, with Lauro. Eisen speaks highly of Lauro’s legal skills. Eisen told me, “He will have tricks up his sleeve by the time we get to trial, which I think will be as soon as the first quarter of ’24. Don’t expect to hear these cartoon versions of the defenses but something more sophisticated.”

Why, then, make these arguments? Trump’s legal strategy in all three criminal cases so far — the Mar-a-Lago documents case pending in Florida, the state-level business records case pending in Manhattan and the election case — has rested not on winning in court but on delaying and then winning the election. To do the latter, he feels compelled to give his supporters some rationale, however specious and silly, to excuse their voting for him.

Fortunately, if the election case moves briskly ahead and Trump is convicted, only the most bamboozled MAGA voters will be left to parrot his excuses.

Today's Gun Nut

Andrew Clyde owns a gun store in Georgia that sells a shitload of AR15s, body armor and ammo.

Seems like when he hands out lapel pins shaped like assault weapons, it's not just another opportunity for Republicans to spit in our face (this is Nat'l Gun Violence Survivors Week for fuck's sake) but also a pretty blatant abuse of his office in order to further his own commercial interests.

THERE IS NO HONOR

IN THE GOP

GOP Rep. Responsible for AR-15 Pins Permeating Capitol Reveals Himself

Georgia congressman Andrew Clyde made no apologies for the obvious troll—and said he even had more to share.

The man responsible for handing out pins in the shape of assault weapons that have been adopted by right-wing Republicans in Congress has revealed himself—as clashes between the political parties grow over the controversial accessory.

Earlier this week, the pins appeared on the lapels of Rep. George Santos (R-NY) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) in committee meetings and on the House floor.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), who has worn the pin for years, was also seen parading it on Wednesday as he delivered remarks critical of gun restrictions.

The pins did not go unnoticed, with Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) tweeting out photos asking: “Where are these assault weapon pins coming from?”

It now appears we have an answer.

Turns out Clyde, who Business Insider revealed last year owns Georgia's No. 4-ranked firearms store, is responsible for dishing out the pins. He even says he has “plenty more to give out.”

“I’m Congressman Andrew Clyde for Georgia’s 9th District,” Rep. Clyde says in a video posted to Twitter on Thursday night claiming credit for the stunt.

“I hear that this little pin I’ve been giving out on the House floor has been triggering some of my Democrat colleagues,” he continues, no doubt referencing Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), who described them as “despicable and an insult to all of the victims of assault weapons,” and Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), who asked simply, “What is wrong with you?”

Clyde then explains his decision to hand out the pins and urges those who want one to visit his office.

“I give it out to remind people of the Second Amendment of the Constitution and how important it is in preserving our liberties.

“If I missed you on the House floor, please stop by my office in Cannon, I have plenty more to give out.”

The news was greeted by Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL), who tweeted in reply: “Save a pin for me!”

It came on the same day Rep. Clyde said he filed a measure to overturn two bills passed by the D.C. Council: one that would allow non-citizens the right to vote in local elections and another that would update the city’s outdated criminal code.

It is also National Gun Violence Survivors’ Week.

 (from May, 2022)

A Republican member of Congress owns a gun store and makes millions selling military-style rifles, body armor, ammunition, and other weapon accessories

Members of Congress come from all sorts of backgrounds, but most don't own a gun store.
Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia's 9th Congressional District is the owner of Clyde Armory in Athens.

According to Clyde's financial disclosure, the store is worth up to $25 million.
Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday.

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Support for Second Amendment rights and firearm ownership are conservative staples in Congress.

But as lawmakers again debate firearm restrictions in the aftermath of an elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, a member Congress actually owns a gun store: Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia's 9th Congressional District.

When not working in Washington, DC, Clyde leads the No. 4-ranked firearm store in Athens, Georgia, according to Yelp: Clyde Armory.

According to Clyde's 2021 federal financial disclosure, the congressman's stake in the store is worth anywhere between $5 million and $25 million, and it earned him between $1 million and $5 million in income in 2020 alone.

In addition to being a retail gun store, the armory also acts as "law enforcement supply," per the disclosure.

The store's website shows it sells a multitude of firearms and accessories, including military-style semiautomatic rifles, weapon silencers, and ballistic helmets.

Among the items for sale at Clyde Armory: a Colt-manufactured AR-15 rifle for $1,349.95 and a .50 caliber semi-automatic rifle for $11,384.95.

Clyde is supported by the National Rifle Association — the organization's political action committee donated $1,000 to Clyde's campaign in 2020, according to nonpartisan research group OpenSecrets.

Representatives from Clyde's office did not respond to Insider's questions and request for comment.

But according to Clyde's campaign website, he's got big plans for firearm rights in Congress. He wants to:

• Repeal several taxes on firearms and ammunition
• Deregulate weapon silencers, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns
• Eliminate the Brady background check system

In December 2020, Clyde told Fox News that the nation's current gun background check system is flawed and "puts the federal government between the Constitution and the individual in a way that denies the person their individual constitutional right. That's not right."

The congressman also spoke out in March against firearm records kept by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

"As a steadfast supporter of the Second Amendment and a Federal Firearms Licensee by trade, I find the ATF's egregious abuse of power deeply unsettling and in need of swift action from Congress in order to protect law-abiding gun owners' privacy and Second Amendment rights," Clyde said alongside members of the House Second Amendment Caucus.

Clyde, a freshman representative, may be best known for equating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol to "a normal tourist visit."

He sits on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Homeland Security Committee. He's also a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

Clyde coasted to victory in his Republican primary Tuesday night, easily defeating his GOP challengers.

Being in a "Safe R" district, he's likely to win re-election in November, according to Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Today In Both Sides Don't

Most people (ie: normal decent people), when they see a hole in the law or the constitution, they try to fix it.

Amy Klobuchar is one of those normal decent people.

Others - manipulative, self-dealing assholes like John Eastman and Marjorie Trailer Park Greene - see those glitches in the law as opportunities to dive into SmarmSpace and exploit the loopholes in furtherance of their own narrow interests.

IMHO, the glitches are there, and haven't been addressed, because the whole thing has worked pretty well on the honor system. ie: People of honor see and recognize that doing some shitty thing may be technically "legal", but it's not an honorable thing to do.

And yes, the SmarmSpace rangers know they're doing shitty things.

Honorable people don't do shitty things.

It's not honorable to make a move to monopolize power under a constitution so obviously constructed to prevent someone monopolizing power.

The GOP seems to have flopped all the way over to "If it's not specifically prohibited, then it's both peachy and dandy - let's knock this shit out."

Opinion

The plan to stop a future Trumpist coup moves closer to reality

It turns out our political system might prove capable of defending itself against future subversion after all.

In a big step forward for protecting democracy, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced Tuesday that he expects action in the lame-duck session on reform of the arcane law that Donald Trump exploited during his attempted 2021 coup.

“I expect an omnibus will contain priorities both sides want to see passed into law, including more funding for Ukraine and the Electoral Count Act,” Schumer said, in a reference to an end-of-year spending bill the two parties are negotiating.

Speaking about reform of the ECA, the 1887 law that governs how presidential electors are counted in Congress, Schumer added: “It will be great to get that done.”

This is welcome news. The Senate version of ECA reform would clarify the vice president’s role in counting electors as purely ceremonial, make it harder for Congress to invalidate legitimate electors and make corruption of the appointment of electors at the state level much harder.

All these points would make a rerun of Trump’s 2020 effort less likely, in part because they would patch up ECA vulnerabilities that invited him to attempt it. He pressured his vice president to halt the electoral count, got Republican members of Congress to vote to cast out Joe Biden’s electors and pressed state legislatures to appoint sham electors for him instead.

Because of this, ECA reform has long risked being seen as “anti-Trump.” That might have rendered it unlikely that 10 GOP senators would support it and make it possible to circumvent a filibuster.

But Schumer’s announcement is cause for real optimism. That’s because it’s unlikely Schumer would have made it if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) hadn’t quietly indicated support for attaching reform to the omnibus.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a longtime proponent of ECA reform, says she’s optimistic that Republicans will remain behind this endgame. Klobuchar notes that McConnell voted for ECA reform in the Rules Committee, and it’s supported by well over a dozen other GOP senators.

“It’s clearly a top priority,” Klobuchar told me, speaking of how ECA reform is seen by McConnell and its Republican supporters. Klobuchar noted that negotiations over it have been a “strong bipartisan effort” and reform boasts some “very conservative members supporting it.”

“This law is just crying out for updating,” Klobuchar said. While some House lawmakers want new tweaks to the Senate bill, a person familiar with the situation says the Senate version is the one that will move forward.

In a twist, the prospects for passage might be improved by attaching it to the omnibus. As this column recently noted, holding a stand-alone Senate vote on ECA reform might subject it to more attacks from MAGA-loyal forces in Congress and in right wing media, making it harder for GOP senators to support it. Schumer’s plan allows McConnell to move it forward a bit more quietly.

New developments this week forcefully underscored the need for reform. In a widely noted speech, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) openly declared that had she been in charge of Trump’s insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, it would have been “armed.”

And text messages from House Republicans to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, unearthed by Talking Points Memo, show members of Congress scheming in the run-up to Jan. 6 to overturn Trump’s loss in all kinds of ways, with one even calling for Trump to declare martial law.

What all this means is that the insurrectionist spirit will run strong in next year’s GOP-controlled House, which would be likely to try to help with any effort by Trump — or an imitator — to subvert the 2024 presidential election. Under current law, if a GOP-controlled state legislature appointed electors for the Republican nominee in defiance of the state’s popular vote, the GOP House could count those electors, leading to a stolen election or constitutional crisis.

Reform of the ECA would make that much harder to pull off. It would require governors to certify lawful electors, create new pathways for legal challenges to corruptly appointed electors and require Congress to count the electors validated by the courts.

“The clock is ticking towards midnight,” Matthew Seligman, a legal scholar and ECA expert, told me. “Congress seems poised to pull us back from the brink, at a moment when the extreme wing of the GOP House seems more eager than ever to trigger a crisis.”

Passage of these fixes, especially along with this cycle’s defeat of numerous gubernatorial candidates who were essentially running on a vow to subvert future elections, would amount to major action in defense of democracy and self-rule. As the unabashed and continuing insurrectionism of Greene and other House Republicans demonstrates, it’s poised to come not a moment too soon.

Meanwhile, In Smarmspace

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Smarmspace: the distance between promise and delivery; between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law; where loopholes are found, and often manufactured; the land of rationalization. Trump is The King Of Smarmspace, and he's taught his devotees well.

Today In Smarmspace

...with a delicious side of good old-fashioned homemade Orwell.

David Perdue is a Smarmspace denizen of a particularly unctuous nature.

Greg Sargent, WaPo:

Sen. David Perdue’s new appearance on Laura Ingraham’s show deserves careful study. It provides a comically twisted demonstration of the limits on what Republicans’ calculations permit them to say to Trump voters in the wake of his election loss — a period of deceitfulness and outright madness that should be marveled at for generations.

As the Georgia senator’s Thursday night appearance showed, his smarmy two-step with Trump voters runs as follows: President Trump is right. The presidential election’s integrity is in doubt. And Joe Biden is not the legitimate winner. But you should channel your anger over this by voting in the runoff election, whose integrity I will guarantee to right the wrong done to you, so I can act as a check on Biden.

It is often claimed that Republicans who refuse to concede Trump’s loss are suffering from “cowardice” or that he has held them “hostage.” In this telling, Republicans secretly know the truth but won’t say so, simply because the political price of weathering his fearsome rage-tweets is too great.

This won’t do. It badly undersells the bottomless bad faith and dishonorable instrumentalism that Republicans are employing here. Yes, Republicans know Trump lost and that contradicting him on this point might cost them some of his supporters.

But they are fully embracing the opportunity to use this situation to their advantage, not doing so because they see no other option. They are trying to harness and channel all this depraved Trumpian rage to their instrumental advantage, not work around it, despite its extraordinarily destructive potential.

The conceit that “cowardice” is the driving motive here imagines that these Republicans secretly harbor principles that they’d like to honor if only they could do so safely. And while there have been honorable Republicans who have defended our political system at great personal risk, there is just zero indication that Republicans such as Perdue have any such principles.

“There are a lot of voters out there who are demoralized,” Ingraham told Perdue. “They think Donald Trump won this state and won it handily. And they may even be asking themselves if there’s any point in voting at all without reforms in this system. What do you say to them?”

To this idea, that Trump’s claims of a fraud-riddled electoral system might depress Republican turnout, Perdue replied:

President Trump is very frustrated. And I’m very frustrated. And we’re going to do everything we possibly can to make sure that whatever anomalies are uncovered in November don’t happen in January. But this is illogical for any Republican to think that, “I’m just going to sit down and not vote,” and hand the keys over to the Democrats. We know what’s at stake. This is the last line of defense against their radical liberal agenda.

“The anomalies that happened in November cannot happen in January, and we’ve got to do everything we can,” Perdue added.

Yes, Trump voters are told, serious irregularities in the presidential voting absolutely happened and will indeed be uncovered. But we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. So take your frustration over those irregularities and strike another blow for Trump by stopping the radical takeover.

As it happens, it’s true that GOP voters — all Georgia voters — can have confidence that the votes will be counted accurately in the Senate runoffs. We know this, because the system worked last time. It rendered a legitimate outcome.

But Perdue won’t say so. Why not? Is it because he would like to be able to say this, but worries it would “demoralize” Trump voters?

I say not. I say it’s because he cynically calculates that keeping Trump voters in a rage about the phantom stolen election could actually give them a reason to turn out for the runoffs, since in some sense it puts Trump on the ballot again.

Note this marvelously demented quote from Perdue, about Trump’s planned rally in the state on Saturday:

He’s going to deliver this message, and that is, “Look, we’ve got to protect what we did for four years under this administration.” If in fact the result is not in his favor, we’ve got to protect that. And the way to do that is to get Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue reelected.

Note how Perdue claims he and his fellow Georgia senator should be elected to act as checks on Biden, but slips in the idea that Biden is not the legitimate winner. The former without the latter just isn’t enough to juice up turnout.

Can one imagine an alternate universe in which Perdue would prefer Trump concede defeat, allowing Perdue to simply argue that he should be elected to defend Trump’s supposed achievements against Biden?

Perhaps, but many top Republicans actively and concertedly adopted a strategy immediately after the election that entailed refusing to concede for the express purpose of keeping the Trump base energized. Perdue is simply carrying this forward.

It might be that this strategy is backfiring, in that the initial hopes of using the specter of an election stolen from Trump now unexpectedly risks depressing turnout. But that doesn’t change the fact that the initial calculation was to exploit that specter to juice up turnout.

This is not a situation in which “cowardice” is preventing Republicans like Perdue from doing what their principles would otherwise dictate they do. They are not Trump’s “hostages.” Rather, it’s a situation in which they settled on a deliberate strategy of mobilizing the base by telling them that refusing to acknowledge the outcome of a legitimate U.S. election is the correct stance, and even the pro-democracy stance.

Republicans are not the victims of the irrationality of Trump voters. They dishonorably set out to manipulate it to their advantage, to the greatest degree possible.